Deep State Mortgage Catastrophe

The data for April and May prove that Obama’s plan to rescue those facing mortgage foreclosure is a dismal failure. Since this issue was the cornerstone of his economic program during the campaign, its abject failure is a significant setback for the Administration’s economic plan.

In the month ending on May 26th, 464,983 foreclosures of subprime and Alt-Amortgages (out of a universe of 3.2 million studied). 2010 hit 1.2 million foreclosures. So in 2009, 15% of all subprime mortgages were foreclosed in May! Only 19,041 — a paltry 6% — were modified during this period. And of those modified, only 11,200 involved any reduction in the monthly payments! Only 12% involved any write-off of interest, fees, or principal and 27% of the loan modifications actually increased the monthly payments due.

Alan M. White of the Valparaiso Law School, who conducted the study, noted that the data showed that “the Administration’s plan to stimulate mortgage modifications does not seen to have had much effect yet, at least in this market segment” [i.e. subprimes].

And the trend lines are all bad:

• The number of loan modifications dropped 11% from April to May.

• The ratio of foreclosure losses to modification write downs (the amount lost in foreclosure: the amount rescued by write-downs) doubled in the past month. For every dollar saved in modifications, $150 was lost in foreclosure.

When Obama launched his mortgage rescue plan, he promised that it would help five million households. So far, he is about 4,969,000 short of his goal!!

• The reworked mortgage payment would come to more than 31% of your income

• Your mortgage is over $759,000

• The home is not your primary residence

The number of beleaguered homeowners who can slip through the eye of this particular needle and qualify for a mortgage modification is tiny.

Dick Morris

(We discuss failure of Obama’s mortgage relief program at length in our new book Catastrophe, due out on June 23rd. Pre-orders of signed books are available at DickMorris.com)

And yet there is an easy remedy at hand. Obama should simply say, as they did in Sweden, that the government will simply buy the distressed mortgages from the banks and adjust the payments to make them possible for the homeowners. Then, when the economy comes back, the homeowners could either pay back the government what they owe for the postponed payments or sell the house and repay the feds from the proceeds. If they won’t do either, the feds could then seize the house and get their money back. Cost to the taxpayers: zero. In f act, they would likely make a profit.

Why won’t Obama do this? It’s because a Democratic administration cannot throw people out of their homes. Better to let them default and make the big, bad bank do the dirty work.

All these facts underscore how cynical was Obama’s campaign in predicating so much of its economic message on an appeal to help those facing foreclosure. You don’t hear Obama talk about foreclosures any more do you? That’s because he knows he has no solution and that he won’t offer any.

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Unconstitutional Powers By Repetition

Usurpations by one branch of government, of powers entrusted to a coequal branch, are not rendered constitutional by repetition.

The United States Supreme Court held unconstitutional hundreds of laws enacted by Congress over the course of five decades that included a legislative veto of executive actions in INS v. Chada, 462 U.S. 919 (1982).

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True Federalism.

“The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to.

Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, law, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself.

It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man’s farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.

What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body.”